The Stolen Gold Affair

17 Quincannon

James O’Hearn was by turns shocked, incredulous, outraged. When Quincannon finished repeating the charges against Walrus Ben, the mine superintendent went to loom above the chair in which the shift boss sat stone-faced and spine-stiffened.

“Why, damn you, Tremayne?” he demanded. “After a dozen years as a loyal company man, why?”

Walrus Ben raised his beetle-browed head. He said with dull defiance, “Loyal company man! What did that get me, working down in the goddamn hole six days a week all those years?”

“It got you promoted to shift boss.”

“Sure, for a few dollars more a month. It also got me weak lungs from the rock gas explosion down on eight-hundred five years ago. What the hell did I have to look forward to? Nothing but another couple of years until I couldn’t do the job anymore and a disabled old age on the dole.”

“So that’s why you turned traitor.”

“Traitor, hell. I don’t owe you or Monarch anything more than a day’s work for a day’s pay, and that’s what I gave you. Even after the high-grading started, you got that from me same as always.”

“I also got a dead assistant foreman from you. Explain that away.”

Tremayne sat stone-faced again.

“Traitor I can understand,” O’Hearn said, “but not cold-blooded murderer. First McClellan, then the attempt on Quincannon in the chute this morning—”

“Wasn’t my idea.”

“Nobody else was around when you shot McClellan.”

“I didn’t mean McClellan,” the shift boss said sullenly. “That was an accident. Frank lost his head when he saw the ore-crushing hideout had been found. I had the derringer in my hand, he tried to grab it, and it went off. Only choice I had then was to put the blame on Quinn, or whatever his name is. I couldn’t shoot him, too, in cold blood. I’m not made that way, no matter what you think.”

“No? What about the chute attempt?”

“Simcox’s stupid notion, not mine. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Whose stupid notion was the high-grading? Yours?”

“No.”

“Who, then? Simcox? McClellan?”

“Hah. Neither of them had the brains or the guts to come up with the plan, much less set it all up.”

Quincannon said, “Yost. He’s the ringleader.”

Walrus Ben didn’t deny it. He blew out a heavy, coughing breath, as if expelling the last of his defiance. You could see in his eyes what took its place: the fatalism that sooner or later befell most criminals facing long prison terms or the hangman’s noose. Questions would produce answers more readily now. “That’s right,” he said in flattened tones, “Yost. Smart bastard, whip-smart. Not the first time he put together a deal like this.”

“How did you get mixed up with him?”

“Simcox. Joe knew him from one of those other deals.”

“Yost isn’t his right name. What is?”

“Only name I know him by.”

“He’s not a union representative. What does he do besides put together high-grading schemes?”

“He never said and I never asked.” Tremayne’s lips twisted in a humorless half grin. “Simcox probably knew, but he can’t tell you now.”

“Where did Yost go when he left here yesterday?”

Shrug.

“How much dust was he carrying with him?”

“Plenty. The biggest load so far. He had the rest of us working hard to mill as much as we could.”

O’Hearn said, “And then you picked up the stashed dust, smuggled it out, and turned it all over to him.”

“That was the arrangement.”

“You hold out on him, did you?”

“No. Nobody did.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Quincannon said. “McClellan managed to carry out some he kept for himself.”

“The hell he did.”

“At least two troy ounces, probably more.”

“How do you know that?”

“How I know is no concern of yours. What is Yost planning to do with the load he carried off yesterday?”

“Same as before. Sell it for cash and pay off the rest of us in easier-to-spend greenbacks.”

That confirmed Quincannon’s theory. It also explained why Yost had made two short visits and the recent long one to Patch Creek — to collect the loot from Walrus Ben and to make sure the operation was running smoothly. “But you don’t know where he does that kind of business?”

Headshake.

“Where did you first meet him? Not in Patch Creek?”

“No. Marysville.”

“Is Marysville his home base?”

“Didn’t seem so to me. Just a handy meeting place.”

“Handy for him, too?”

Shrug.

Home-based in Sacramento, mayhap, Quincannon speculated. Or somewhere near the capital that allowed for a short train ride to Marysville. “Where in Marysville did the meeting take place?” he asked.

“Some tavern by the Yuba River,” Tremayne said, “I don’t remember the name. Simcox arranged it. Me and the others rode the stage down there on a Sunday.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Four months. Early June. We started high-grading in July — took us a month to get everything set up.”

O’Hearn asked, “How many others besides you, McClellan, and Simcox?”

“Three — one on the night shift, two on the graveyard,” Walrus Ben said, and named them. None of the names was familiar to Quincannon.

O’Hearn had more questions: How many other ore-crushing hideouts were there and where were they located? How much had Walrus Ben and the others been paid so far? The answer to the first was three: one on eleven-hundred and two on twelve-hundred, all in abandoned crosscuts and stopes. The answer to the second increased the superintendent’s ire. Some two thousand dollars had lined the pockets of each of the six conspirators, with the promise of another fifteen hundred or so to come. Yost would have kept a hefty cut of the profits for himself, at least 25 percent of the total take and probably more. All of which put the estimated value of the stolen gold in the neighborhood of $40,000 — a substantial loss to Hoxley and Associates if most of the amount was not recovered.

The interrogation ended with the arrival of Sheriff Micah Calder, summoned by a messenger sent by O’Hearn. Calder looked and acted even more befuddled than usual, as if he was having difficulty comprehending that the Monarch Mine had been victimized by a high-grading gang led by the bogus Jedediah Yost, that it was Walrus Ben Tremayne who had shot and killed Frank McClellan, and that Quincannon was not only innocent of any wrongdoing but a San Francisco detective hired by Everett Hoxley. He kept shaking his head and passing such doltish remarks as “If that don’t beat all” and “I be hornswoggled.” He departed finally with the shift boss in handcuffs and instructions from O’Hearn to locate and arrest the three miners Tremayne had named.

When they were gone, O’Hearn sank heavily into his desk chair and lighted a green-flecked cheroot. The fragrance of tobacco made Quincannon briefly long for his pipe and a bowl of Navy Cut.

“A damned sorry state of affairs, Quincannon. And still a long way from being finished. What do you intend to do about Yost and the gold dust he carted away yesterday?”

“Find him, and either the load of dust or its cash equivalent if he’s had time for a quick sale.”

“How? Ben wasn’t lying about not knowing Yost’s real name or where to find him.”

“No,” Quincannon agreed, “he wasn’t lying.”

“Well, then?”

“We’ll start with a search of Simcox’s belongings. Then Tremayne’s, to make sure he was telling the truth; McClellan’s again, if only to recover his stash of dust; and the trio of other conspirators. And we’ll question those three as soon as they’re in custody.”

“And if none of that gives us a lead?”

“Then I’ll commence a canvass of banks and private companies that buy large amounts of gold.”

O’Hearn puffed hard on his cheroot, said through a mist of smoke, “That’s assuming he’s selling it on the legitimate market, not to some crooked underground outfit.”

“He would do that only if he could get full dollar value for the gold, a highly unlikely prospect on the black market. My guess is that he has an arrangement with a quasi-legitimate firm that asks no questions about the source of the gold.”

“If that’s the case, he could be selling it to them as Yost, without giving his genuine address.”

“Possibly, although even a quasi-legitimate institution requires valid identification for its transaction records.”

“All right, but such a firm could be anywhere,” O’Hearn argued. “It’ll take weeks to canvass all the possible places.”

“Not nearly that long, with my agency’s resources.”

“Suppose the right one can’t be found. What then?”

Quincannon hedged by saying, “There are other methods of tracking down a fugitive.”

“Such as?”

“None that need be shared. A detective of my caliber has certain trade secrets he reveals to no one.”

The sound O’Hearn made was half growl, half snort. “Swatting yourself on the back again. Bah!”

“And with just cause. I exposed the high-graders and put an end to their game as promised, did I not? And in only ten days. So you needn’t worry, Mr. O’Hearn. Yost won’t get away with his ill-gotten gains.”

“I’ll stop worrying and admit you’re as slick as you think you are when he’s behind bars and restitution has been made. And it had better be soon.”

Quincannon said, “Oh, it will be,” with more conviction than he felt.